Poems: Three Series, Complete
by
Emily Dickinson
Part 6 out of 6
XLVI.
DYING.
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, -- and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
XLVII.
Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So sailors say, on yesterday,
Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
And gurgled down and down.
But angels say, on yesterday,
Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o'erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
Exultant, onward sped!
XLVIII.
There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.
The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;
Somebody flings a mattress out, --
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that, --
I used to when a boy.
The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;
And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It's easy as a sign, --
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.
XLIX.
We never know we go, -- when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.
L.
THE SOUL'S STORM.
It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.
It burned me in the night,
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning's beam.
I thought that storm was brief, --
The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.
LI.
Water is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
Birds, by the snow.
LII.
THIRST.
We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
Of fingers going by.
It intimates the finer want,
Whose adequate supply
Is that great water in the west
Termed immortality.
LIII.
A clock stopped -- not the mantel's;
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
That just now dangled still.
An awe came on the trinket!
The figures hunched with pain,
Then quivered out of decimals
Into degreeless noon.
It will not stir for doctors,
This pendulum of snow;
The shopman importunes it,
While cool, concernless No
Nods from the gilded pointers,
Nods from the seconds slim,
Decades of arrogance between
The dial life and him.
LIV.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S GRAVE.
All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
In quiet Haworth laid.
This bird, observing others,
When frosts too sharp became,
Retire to other latitudes,
Quietly did the same,
But differed in returning;
Since Yorkshire hills are green,
Yet not in all the nests I meet
Can nightingale be seen.
Gathered from many wanderings,
Gethsemane can tell
Through what transporting anguish
She reached the asphodel!
Soft fall the sounds of Eden
Upon her puzzled ear;
Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
When 'Bronte' entered there!
LV.
A toad can die of light!
Death is the common right
Of toads and men, --
Of earl and midge
The privilege.
Why swagger then?
The gnat's supremacy
Is large as thine.
LVI.
Far from love the Heavenly Father
Leads the chosen child;
Oftener through realm of briar
Than the meadow mild,
Oftener by the claw of dragon
Than the hand of friend,
Guides the little one predestined
To the native land.
LVII.
SLEEPING.
A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
That makes no show for dawn
By stretch of limb or stir of lid, --
An independent one.
Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?
LVIII.
RETROSPECT.
'T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms, --
It had the tassels on.
I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble's joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.
I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father'd multiply the plates
To make an even sum.
And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?
But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.
LIX.
ETERNITY.
On this wondrous sea,
Sailing silently,
Ho! pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar,
Where the storm is o'er?
In the silent west
Many sails at rest,
Their anchors fast;
Thither I pilot thee, --
Land, ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!
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